Sunday, January 15, 2012

Saga Warband!

I recently got into the excellent Dark Ages skirmish game SAGA, which uses individually based 28 mm miniatures.  After playing with a Saxon (well, Anglo-Dane) warband at a game, I decided to make one of my own.  It's been a while since I painted things at this scale, so I had a bit of adjustment to do.

All of the following miniatures are from the Wargames Factory Armoured and Unarmoured Saxons boxes.  These are serviceable miniatures, even though they have a bit of a bad reputation.  The annoying thing is that none of their necks fit properly onto their bodies, and a bit of slicing was needed.  The good thing is that being plastic, they are easily convertible.

I converted this Anglo-Dane figure into a warlord by giving him a cape and changing his pose to hold his shield on the ground.  Hopefully he looks leadery enough.

The huscarls and the warlord are the ones with conversions.  I decided to give the huscarls two-handed axes, so I put their shields onto their backs.  This also required putting in shield straps, which the box didn't have, and changing some of their arm poses through cutting and gluing hands.  This way I created the pose where they hold the two-handed axes horizontally in front of their bodies.

 Close-up of a huscarl with a horn.

  
These are built straight out of the box, with no conversions.  They are supposed to be wealthy, well-equipped warriors, either lower-ranking thanes or wealthier ceorls.

These unarmoured warriors are also built with no conversions.  They are the grunts of the Saxon/Anglo-Dane army.  

As you can see from the close-up, overall these miniatures aren't bad and have enough detail to serve as good wargame pieces.

Considering how much I've been veering away from 1/72s, I probably should change the name of this blog to something more general...